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Friday, January 22, 2010

Previews HYPE: March '10

Diligently wading through the phone book that is Previews Catalogue so you don't have to...here are ten choice books shipping to comic shops in March that I think may get overlooked or that I'm just plain excited about...

1. The Art of Jaime Hernandez: The Secrets of Life & Death HC - An examination of the work of a cartooning legend, featuring childhood drawings, unpublished work, unseen sketches, an introduction by Alison Bechdel, and, of course, plenty of beautiful art.

2. House of Five Leaves (Volume 1) - After reading Natsume Ono's excellent not simple, I'm really excited about this new offering through Viz's IKKI line, the most recent manga from the acclaimed artist.

4. It Was the War of the Trenches - A new Jacques Tardi (West Coast Blues, You Are There) offering, continuing Fantagraphics' dedicated translation of the European cartoonist's work.

5. New Archaia Series - Archaia launches new mini-series featuring familiar titles. First is Matz and Luc Jacamon's continuation of the acclaimed series The Killer in The Killer: Modus Vivendi #1. Then Hub's Okko series continues in Okko: The Cycle of Air #1. Both are excellent books.

7. Dark Horse All-Ages Classic Reprints - Dark Horse is reprinting a lot of great comics for kids (and everyone) this month. They're putting 664 pages of the early Dark Horse reprints of Stanley and Irving's Little Lulu under a single cover for just $25, much like you see with manga omnibus editions (Giant Size Little Lulu). They're also flushing out their Harvey Comics Classics collections by collecting more Casper in The Harvey Comics Treasury (Volume 1): Casper the Friendly Ghost and Friends.

8. Super F*ckers TP - All four issues of James Kochlaka's outrageous, foul, fantastic alt-superhero series is collected - finally.

9. American Vampire #1 - Co-written by Stephen King, this new series debuting from DC's Vertigo line is a period piece that traces the origins of vampirism in America

10. Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars: The Jesse Marsh Years - Following the Jesse Marsh Tarzan reprints, Dark Horse is now releasing the three-issue run of the artist (with writer Paul S. Newman) on the space adventurer.